Some news outlets balk at meeting with Holder

Friday

May 31, 2013 at 12:01 AMMay 31, 2013 at 12:16 PM

WASHINGTON - Several U.S. news organizations rejected an offer by Attorney General Eric Holder to meet and discuss how the Justice Department handles investigations that involve reporters, saying it would be inappropriate to talk in secret.

WASHINGTON — Several U.S. news organizations rejected an offer by Attorney General Eric Holder to meet and discuss how the Justice Department handles investigations that involve reporters, saying it would be inappropriate to talk in secret.

However, representatives of five other media outlets went ahead with a meeting yesterday, arriving at the Justice Department’s headquarters to see Holder after recent disclosures that federal prosecutors had seized journalists’ records without warning.

Reuters, CNN, The New York Times and the Associated Press declined to meet with Holder, President Barack Obama’s top law-enforcement official, because the meetings were to be “off the record,” meaning they could not be recorded or reported.

The journalists who attended the meeting were from the New York Daily News, The New Yorker, Politico, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

It was unclear how many media companies were invited or would attend other meetings planned for today.

The talks followed the Obama administration’s decision to search the email and phone records of Fox News, and the phone records of the Associated Press, as part of investigations into leaks of secret government information.

The seizure of records, and an FBI agent’s description of Fox News reporter James Rosen as a potential criminal co-conspirator, led to an outcry from journalists and prompted new calls for a federal law protecting reporters’ work.

Washington is debating how the Obama administration is balancing the need for national security with privacy rights. Along with a separate furor over the Internal Revenue Service’s giving conservative political groups extra scrutiny, it also stoked fears of excessive government intrusion under Obama.

Holder personally authorized the searches of Fox News records as the Justice Department investigated a leak regarding North Korea, a department official said on Tuesday.

Holder has echoed Obama in saying that leaks of classified information pose security risks and must stop.